Capitalism is where there is a class of people whose role is to own things. Or put another way, it’s where substantial portions of industry are owned by private interests that the public has little oversight over. Money and markets don’t necessarily require capitalism. Free markets can exist without capitalism with systems like these:
- All businesses are employee-owned, such as through cooperatives, or employee stock ownership plans where employees own effectively all the stock.
- Businesses are publicly owned via a democratic government, but those businesses are expected to operate in a largely self-sufficient way, and are allowed to compete with each other.
- Public ownership like above, but by industrial unions
Those are forms of “market socialism”. A real system is likely to have a mixed economy, such as cooperatives, with some state-controlled or union-controlled industries for cases where trade-offs don’t favor market competition.
I am seeing more and more the inverted, countries that are capitalists against free market
America is only free market when it comes to policies that protect consumers. When it comes to anything else it’s a fucking free-for-all.
America is only free market when it comes to policies that protect consumers.
On the books, maybe. But if we enforced those laws, the AAA games industry wouldn’t now be down to a few giant nesting dolls of buy-outs.
I meant that when anyone proposes a law or regulation to protect consumers, it gets shot down for the excuse of the free market will correct itself. And when it does try to correct itself, the billionaire class just buys up the legislators to bail them and their failing businesses out. Sorry for not being clear.
What? Protect them how? The stock market is Vegas and the house always wins.
What they mean is policies to protect consumers “cannot be done because we want a free market” but any situation that results in making more money is A-OK even if it’s not friendly to a free market.
Aaaaaahhhh!
I’m saying that when legislation is proposed to protect the consumer/people, everyone’s excuse to not support those kinds of laws involve the hand of the free market. In actuality our government has been captured by the owner class and they change the laws in their favor when they are getting fucked by the hand of the free market.
Ah gotcha
I think he is saying the opposite of what you think he is saying.
I’m saying that when legislation is proposed to protect the consumer/people, everyone’s excuse to not support those kinds of laws involve the hand of the free market. In actuality our government has been captured by the owner class and they change the laws in their favor when they are getting fucked by the hand of the free market.
what a fat American thing to say, and I’m a fat American.
no surprise that you have a lemmy.ca account.
the free market no longer exists. my proof? the current state of the American stock exchange. it’s been weaponized by private investment firms to assassinate business targets that either won’t play the cabals game, or happen to be a strategic target for a wider game.
the fact that large companies have so much power at their disposal, and are even brazen enough to use that power unfettered, proves that the free market is dead.
the US is a plutocracy, most just don’t realize it yet.
If things go back to a barter system, it’s already over.
Society has collapsed. Billions have died.There is no “back to a barter system”, though, because barter isn’t what predated capitalism, it’s what exists in a capitalist system when the system fails and people need something other than money.
For most of her man history, we primarily operated under various styles of gift economies that are more akin to modern conceptions of mutual aid as as envisioned by socialism and especially anarchism.
Barter, gift economy, whatever you call the direct trade of goods, is the alternative to money. And it only works in small local groups, where everyone knows who to trust and who not to.
Money looong predated capitalism. Every society that grew beyond a few hundred people eventually starts using some form of money. Acient Mesopotamia had actual accountants who tracked money and goods more than 5000 years ago.
IDK, man, we have the letters of bronze age kings who all sent and asked each other for gifts.
If you truly think those “gifts” had no strings attached, no expectations of reciprocity, no complex social rules underpinning the whole practice enforced through threat and application of violence…
I have a bridge to
sellgift you.You can see all of this sort of thing reflected in all sorts of historical and mythological fiction and even in some non-fiction historical research. Most newer than bronzr age, sure, but I think it’s irresponsible to pretend these were just straight gifts.
…Yes, of course they did, that’s what a gift economy is.
I think you need to read more history and less theory.
Yes, that’s what a gift economy is, but bronze age kings “gifting” each other things was not a gift economy.
I think I read too much history as is.
And if that’s not what this is, I’m dying to hear the difference, because I vaguely remember Cline directly comparing the royal “gift giving” to the Kula Ring.
The term free market is widely misunderstood by right and left wingers.
It’s those little mailbox things people put up in their yards that have like books and canned goods and stuff, right?
